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Informing is sharing news in order to facilitate or to keep cooperation.

However, cooperation is not yet universal and, therefore, the underlying object of cooperation up to now has been meant to obtain some advantage –to someone else disadvantage. For this reason, information has always been opaque and the motivation of its purpose could not be published -made universal.

Also, as a consequence of it, information has always looked for affinity, alignment, reinforcement while generating difference and weakening the other. And, in this way, even those cooperating are in fact consenting or submitting to a mandate or order. This is the only possible choice, if any, limited to consent with one side while opposing another, and so goes it on until war.

Fake news phenomena is a good case to reflect or analyze upon for better understanding the role of information. We need to ask ourselves what is the true information, the other side of fake news, the right information -our information. Indeed, only the other´s information is fake, since, obviously, we will not lie to ourselves. Or we do? We cannot be willing to lie to ourselves, but usually, we have to fill up some lack of information with beliefs –figurations.

The most obvious aspect of fake news is false data and misrepresentation of facts because we set up our purposes and claims upon data and facts. So that (re)figuration of them aims at generating a favorable reaction towards the publisher, such as more votes for political parties or alignment and support to one side in the international arena.

Information is shared to promote the advantage of those issuing it. The meaning of a figuration, a work, is attained considering who has paid for it and what interest he has. For instance, according to Chomsky, in the US and in capitalist countries, the media is under the corporation´s control since only they are able to finance it. Therefore, the media always supports corporate interests. But, in general, the state is the biggest information issuer since it counts with official communications means.

Under the circumstances of cooperation by enforcement and irrationality, humanity or human feelings as a source of cooperation is wishful thinking. The widely assumed vision, for example by Chomsky, of the modern slavery abolition as a result of sharing a human feeling, misses that for some military purposes slavery is difficult to keep, as letting the women with the slaves, and, on the contrary, by abolishing it, former slaves can be recruited for the army. Quite a similar case is with the French Revolution. It apparently shows a Providence’s hand or a historical process or progress (towards always a better future), but it misses that its success lies, as with slavery abolition, on the revolutionary state ability to mobilize resources for war by recruiting all the population and so obtaining advantage on its rivals if they are no so ready. Modern ideologies are based on such palliative “goodness” of History.

However, the point of departure for human communication, as Kant points out in Zum Ewigen Frieden, must be a proposal whose features and its proof is not to be imposed and consented, but it achieves everybody´s cooperation by just showing its purpose and motivation since it suits everybody’s desires for happiness. And this communication is the human unity proposal whose motivation is to put an end to mutual harming substituting it by universal care and cooperation.

The communication of the human unity proposal from people to people is also a sincere communication since information related to human unity must be inclusive, show affinity and empathy with everybody without discrimination, and it is because happiness is also a decision we make to live up to our purpose. The truth is just sincerity and vice-versa because it shares all to benefit humanity.

THE CHANNEL

However, personal communication vanishes, the proposal for human unity shall be published, made universal.
Human unity movement cannot apply for states’ means or channels to publish, however, the corporations’ communication means suits that purpose.

Corporations are dependent on the states. States grant them a monopoly on a particular supply and with it the right to collect from the people so that they can compete in the international arena, but nowadays corporations are transnational and responsible to their international users and consumers without discriminating by nationality.

Therefore, we invite Telefónica-Movistar and other world communication corporations counting on linguistic areas to set up a joint channel for the Call and Broadcast of an open and transparent Meeting on Human Unity. That channel will continue to serve Humanity after the event.

A Humanity channel has to be inclusive, show human empathy and affinity without exclusion or discrimination. That channel exposes clearly the purpose and the motives for cooperation.

And the first proposal and purpose is human unity, whose motivation is to substitute mutual harm by universal care and cooperation. If united, how could we harm ourselves?

For the unification details to be considered and published the channel calls for the above mentioned open and public worldwide meeting.
Beyond that meeting, the channel informs of all issues concerning human unity, security, and cooperation, including the purposes and motivation of any proposal always open to everybody´s participation.

The Humanity communication channel includes also the decision making system as it also validates the best proposals or initiatives. Decision making uses some criteria as objectives priority or even urgency, benefits, costs, resources availability, sustainability…. and, in brief, all we know is a human resource.

THE CORPORATIONS RESPONSIBILITY

As users and consumers we are constantly dealing with corporations’ services and products and, therefore, we can require from them human responsibility.

Also, corporations offer their best deals to get customers and, therefore, assuming human responsibility shall make them more competitive since they serve people without national discrimination.

Current corporations’ responsibility called Corporate Social Responsibility, CSR, refers to good or bad practices in their operations while disregards the corporation’s aim. Indeed, they are basically good if they are meant to serve and bad if they are meant to harm.
But now we are asking the corporations to take Humanity as the ultimate or real source of their rights since this is the proper way to serve people. And this is because if the source of their rights is partial their services are subordinated to violence, discrimination, and their service is actually meant to exploit people’s needs and increase their monopoly.

To publish or share information on the human unity proposal is enough now to recognize humanity as sovereign. This initiative, even if firstly unilateral, is not detrimental for the corporations, on the contrary, it adds value to their service because it can be so recognized by their customers. By contrast, such a move if pushed or carried out by the states, or armed units, can be only simultaneously implemented (and never unilaterally) because harming purposes cannot be shared, communicated, but just jointly eliminated.

Human unity results in the human community by universal and simultaneous disarmament and dismantling of armed units as also by the corporation’s cooperation by using responsibility and/or transparency; this is: no discrimination. As Mòzǐ says, only no-discrimination, impartiality, is justice or peace or order, something we have to understand well and consciously accept –that just was Heaven’s will, he added.

Each venture product or service (a glass, a TV set, a car, an app and so on) always look to satisfy the need and desires of the people without discrimination and any improvement or development of a product or service is humanity´s progress notwithstanding who has achieved or promoted it.

Human needs and desires are also quite similar, we all need to be feed, want to enjoy good health, be happy, go further…we do not need to argue about our common goals, we do not need politics to set them because we all know and we all agree about what we want.

Furthermore, we are not just passive bodies whose needs and desires have to be satisfied by those products and services, also our relationship as humans becomes impartial when we have a common cause, a common production, a service objective. Even if the reach of such cooperation is limited, we share all the info we have for achieving our common purpose; this is also to recognize humanity as the ultimate source of right, where you feel grateful and happy about others knowing more.

We, the Peace and Cooperation and HUM – Human Unity Movement- associations have applied for a meeting with Madrid City Council aimed to agree on a venue and a date in 2021 where to call for a Congress to set up human unity, this is; to the application of an inclusive decision-making system for the whole of humanity so that we will only universally benefit all ourselves and not more harming each other.

Hereby we expose the Congress concept submitting it as clear as possible to the City Council consideration as also to everybody´s reading it because it is addressed and open to all people in the world as it concerns us all without exception.

THE EVENT

It will be live broadcasted, transparent and open to everybody in the world, while the Participants – experts and most relevant companies’ representatives in each area of common concern and interest- will meet in Madrid during 5 days, 3 of those working in the Congress to agree and generate human cooperation proposals.

We invite the Participants, and anybody willing to contribute to the Congress, to assume and represent Humanity. All the states are invited as observers and we apply for the UN cooperation as link and channel of the Congress with the states.

We propose the following Working Groups: 1. Education/Humanities 2. Development 3. Security. Technologies. 5. Women. 6. Communication. We think of about 20 Participants by area except in Technologies divided in Food, Health, Environment, Energy, Manufacture, and Mobility/Infrastructures with about 8 Participants in each subdivision.

CONGRESS CALL

The Congress Call is the universal communication of human unity and cooperation as the alternative and overcoming of the opposition and mutual destruction or self-destruction.

The Congress call is to be broadcasted by the Communication Group, which is also event co-organizer and the first Group to be set up, therefore we are inviting Telefonica-Movistar to join the Group since Telefonica-Movistar has the required world relevance and it is based in Madrid.

The Congress Call requires and generates a global truce since Humanity is part of both sides in the conflicts.

UNION

A human common and shared security makes military personnel, materials and investment redundant and this is the peace dividend or first humanity asset which is instead redirected to human and technological development according to the Participants’ proposals.

Method

Inclusive decision making is not only important because it ends with harming purposes, but also because it generates transparency, as necessary for cooperation, and unanimity, since decisions are made according to a single best criteria, making redundant strategic decision making or by majorities as also private resources.

Maintenance

Among the participants in the Congress is created a follow-up Commission to supervise and coordinate the implementation of the agreements. This Commission cooperates with the UN and its activity is transparent and open through the global communication channel build by the Communication Working Group. This channel is meant to always enhance participation so that all decisions are evaluated and made by everyone concerned.

Sustainability

Inclusive decision making will facilitate our happiness, to be loved, and the lack of confrontation will not end up in apathy and indolence, since we have to care, improve life…, so we have to care about eating, lodging, health caring, environment, and respond to the outer space call.

ORGANIZATION

The Participants in the Congress will be selected according to relevance criteria in their field of expertise, as also for their practice and experience, and they will send a short preliminary proposal regarding their suggestions for development and possible contribution to Humanity benefit in their area. That proposal will be reviewed and approved by the Congress managers. More info at http://www.human-unity.org/en/universal-congress/

FINANCING

Participant companies shall contribute a fee showing their commitment. They will benefit from global visibility and prestige and become peace dividend or human assets receptors for developing their sector.

MANAGEMENT

Proposal to Madrid City Council

We think it would be convenient to create a legal entity with an office in Madrid participated by HUM and Peace y Cooperation in charge of the Congress conceptual management

Telefónica-Movistar would set up a seat for the media in cooperation with the other communication companies Participants.

Madrid City Council, or a company on its behalf, would be in charge of financial management; as the budget, management of expenditure and income from sponsors and Participant´ companies’ fees, etc.

TO THE MADRILEÑOS

We, all neighbors, are inviting so illustrious people to come to our city and, as much as we are humbly asking for your support, we are counting on it too.

The economy has no much secret behind so much paraphernalia. Nothing better to understand it than its story. And best stories are those having the best scenario. And it is particularly good the one marking the Chinese economic experience because that experience was limited to an almost complete frame, it was a whole world on its own.

In this blog, we have talked about the great intellectual effort made in the Warring States period to achieve unity in China. A lasting peace should have been the so much expected reward for it. Nope. The Qin dynasty, extremely adapted to war by the Legists, could not live on in peacetime and collapsed 15 years after grabbing total power. The Han dynasty took it over and, excluded the Mohists, asked for assistance and advice to all schools of thought on how to keep stability and peace in the empire. Thus, those scholars described the trouble caused by economic processes imbalance resulting in peasant’s revolts and dynasty collapse or sometimes the revolts just paved the way for a foreign army to control China.

Once peace is established, social inequality grows and misery reaches more and more people until they rebel. As recorded by the Hungarian scholar, Balazc, the economic process is detailed by Han scholars in the following way: the growing affluence of superfluous goods means decreasing value for some vital goods like food, etc. and those only having a small piece of land can only earn for their own survival, then, a bad harvest, drought, floods, etc., force them to sell their land and become day laborers, their number inexorably grows, many become redundant, outlaws…., go to the mountains until they find a military leader and revolt…. The perception of this inexorable process is well referred by the solemn start of one the Four Chinese Classics, The Three Kingdoms: “The empire long time united must break, the empire broken must unite.”

A similar phenome is also described by Amartya Sen referring to famines in India by signaling that those famines in rural areas were not caused by the scarcity of food, but due to the imbalance generated by the cities’ affluence.

In the West, the economy´s processes were much more diffuse due to almost constant war engagements between different countries and coalitions. Economic processes, however, were analyzed in the XVIII and XIX century, mainly by Adam Smith and Karl Marx, both taking the state as a production unit (according with sovereign nation state system). While in China state officials’ utmost care was to prevent innovation and capitalism in order to contain as far as possible the inexorable inequality growth, European countries could export their surpluses and this is what it is happening now with China; once it integrated in the world market by the globalization, it might also export that problem of inequality/misery/insecurity to others while avoiding its own collapse.

Economy links us all humans, we are all in the same market now, but that market is not rationally regulated, just the states participate in it competing with one another. The only options or economic decisions to be made are unilateral, however, since the economy affects everyone, a plan was devised for the whole world. It would start with a unilateral change somewhere, a revolutionary state which would carry on and out that revolution followed by an all-out final war format meant to bring about a socialist world, where there would not be the private property of the production means and so would be public or common decision making (also weapons, armies would not be needed there, I suppose –they thought too). That model was based on the French Revolution expansion experience. Also, revolutionaries had a new faith in History as the progress towards freedom (Hegel Dixit).

In the middle of this final war, the cooperation between the SU and China ended when Khrushchev adopted appeasement with the US and the revolution/dictatorship/war stopped. Mao and Stalin had a shared vision –as also fascist’s regimes had understood well their purposes and manners. For Mao, Khrushchev`s Soviet Union was “revisionist”, and became a “bureaucrats bourgeoisie”, who had quitted his historical mission. Khrushchev´s motive was very good: that final war was to be nuclear. Moscow thought of Mao as a madman since he wanted ruthlessly to push it ahead. He was talking though about the revolution in rural areas….

In the end, the socialist block lost the cold war, in good part probably due to that divergence between the two giants, even more when China coupled with the US. The land for those who labor it resulted again in inheritance.

The idea around private property veils the concept of common sense developed much earlier. At this point, we have to study Mòzǐ again. He saw clearly that discrimination is violence (and in time would result in misery and revolts), but nondiscrimination was something impossible to follow or implement by the state since the state (the armed unit) is a command chain meant so to face other states likewise organized. However, today it is possible for us all to use common sense because we can make jointly and inclusive decisions and we can also follow or apply them at the same time, simultaneously, being it the missing link of the past.

Mòzǐ sees that all things shall be there according to its use. Weapons are there to harm, so they should not exist and they will not if we live together. The rest of the things, all are there to serve us, some of them are more beneficial for all than others, so those have to develop more. Its consumption meant to human wellbeing, integration and common goals is its reward.

Currently, what we call (particular or individual) happiness is actually a justification of how our bodies are induced to blind consumption since it results in added value and increase of competitiveness of companies and states. For that blind and irrational competition we need to increase all the time production, workload, abuse of Earth resources a go together at a faster pace to the abyss. Happiness is to be loved, my friend, and to love too, this is; to do effortlessly.

In our current state of alarm, even if we are protecting us by isolation, it would not work if we were not coordinated. But it would be even better if those measures concerning security were not taken by the states separately, but by Humanity as a whole. And it is the same with environmental and other issues faced by Humanity. Our condition of being separated in states is a historical development and it is our current situation but we, as persons, shall not deny ourselves such an overall human cooperation, now within our reach and only beneficial for all.

We tend to consider that since individuals and states are production units, our better or poorer performance delivers justice to each one. This cannot be the case with the pandemic, so we cannot appeal to that argument to also justify the status quo of unilateral decision making. Even more considering the virus spread as a hazardous development and not as something artificially created to disrupt economic rival’s performance as has been happening in history, obviously under secrecy.

We can deal together with the economic measures to be taken in order to face the effects of the pandemic since it also seriously affects the world economy as a whole. While the circumstances of rivalry between the sovereign nation-states will surely prevent us from taking the best measures to protect and save many people lives.

Big states meet sometimes to make decisions concerning the whole world, but they go there only to protect and enhance their own interests, there is no way for them to assume a human perspective. Our proposal, however, is to call the best experts to represent humanity interest as a whole, as a person when is hired by a company can easily represent its interests, and make proposals for a common inclusive decision-making system which can be corroborated by all humans to replace the current system.

Our proposal is an open and transparent Congress on human unity where we can already start using common sense to set up human cooperation. Our guarantee is that we can do it only simultaneously, this is to say, you can disarm only if disarmament is carried out simultaneously by all others so that there is no risk. And also transparency is needed, how could we cooperate if we do not share true information? And we have to start by sharing and spreading this proposal made by HUM – Human Unity Movement – www.human-unity.org

Today we lack it due to this human crisis. A situation indeed concerning us all and, however, we are not acting together because we do not have cooperation mechanisms, even if we see that we need it by exchanging info, sharing and rationalizing supplies, concentrating efforts, etc. We could do much better today for our health and basic security.

Also, I want to share with you a story that might entertain and enlighten you.

It is the story of a desire for sharing, for working together, the cosmopolitan desire. Even if there were very old cosmopolitans, their thoughts did not consolidate in a proposal or alternative then. However, after Socrates’ death, Western civilization always wanted to share, to unity, so it was Socrates’ impact on us, even if he did not write anything and all we know about him is by other sources.

The problem of cosmopolitanism is that it cannot be promoted by any state and, therefore, it is hidden in the curricula. So we learn about Socrates that he would say “I only know that I know nothing”. It is not that, best it is to read yourself what he says. And we know about him mainly by Plato, who in his dialogue Apology, the account of Socrates’ condemn and death, puts those words in his mouth quite different from that “I only know that I know nothing”:

“Listen then. Perhaps some of you will think I am jesting, but be sure that all that I shall say is true. What has caused my reputation is none other than a certain kind of wisdom. What kind of wisdom? Human wisdom, perhaps. It may be that I really possess this, while those whom I mentioned just now are wise with a wisdom more than human; else I cannot explain it, for I certainly do not possess it” (20 d, c)

Let´s illustrate it, make it clear. Socrates would ask something like that to people: “then you say that this guy Apollo shoots his arrows to punish people, or Zeus ask him to shoot them to punish them, and so they die, right? How do you know this? I see some people die, but I have not seen those arrows or those people you say as that handsome Apollo or that uncle Zeus with his big beard….” Quite similarly the Toledo merchants asked don Quixote for a portrait of Dulcinea, even if a very small one, to gladly agree or confess that Dulcinea was the prettiest of all as Don Quixote wanted them to confess.

Well, but this arrogance costs Socrates his life.

What was going on and what is still going on? It might be just that those accusers were very bad people? Why they cared so much about if Socrates believed in the city gods or not? They actually added it in the accusation literally presented to the jury; “Socrates is guilty of not believing in the city gods and thus corrupting the youth”. So it is, the youths have to believe, to confess, to affirm and to defend without seeing, so that they can blindly fight as fighting needs. Indeed, there was then a rumor, a story of the time blaming Socrates’ ‘shamelessness’ of having had a bad influence on the Athenian military expedition to Sicily, a Spartan colony at the time. They said the young soldiers were not enough disciplined. It resulted in a terrible defeat which in the end brought about Athens surrender in the Peloponnesian war.

Yes, my friend, our leaders, our elders, some persons in our community know better. They might have some relevant and specific information as also concerns on public security they cannot share, publish it; so, our media can only talk about economy and propaganda, but media is not there to deal and discuss real matters since they cannot be disclosed. How on Earth could we disclose what relates to strategies, weaponry…? We do not have a way out from despotism, no matter the political system, since, as Rousseau well noticed, it is the same despotism and war or both sides of the same coin. War demands faithful, blind commitment.

Socrates spilled the beans; war actually requires stupidity. Yeah, so is it, subordinates operate –become machines- through ignorance. It was then when that desire for sharing emerged among all Socrates followers, from the Cynics to the Stoics, to the Epicureans, and the Monotheists, since they did not work for the state as now, they all were cosmopolitans, wanted to unite, to share. And the same, even earlier, was so with Mohism in China.

Indeed, hierarchy implies a “more than human” knowledge on gods, rituals, history, etc. since it serves to differentiate and discriminate us and therefore it cannot depend on common sense we all humans share and it cannot be contrasted by experience we all live in the same, but we have to trust others, put ourselves at their mercy to defeat others.

But Covid 19 pandemic puts us all facing reality which is one and the same for all human beings, a reality which equals humans and call for humanity, a desire and only a reality in our time. Before our time it was just a dream, a hope, since for cooperation, common decision making we required simultaneity.

This pandemic will be won because we coordinate our actions, we work together, even if for the isolation. Any partial way is deficient, unsatisfactory and so it is for all human undertakings. Therefore, we need to wake up that desire of sharing, of uniting, as cosmopolitans felt after Socrates death. Socrates found his death beautiful because he was old enough and at the same time able to show his will was sincere since accepting it he could not have another purpose. Even though he understood well his accuser’s good reasons and he could not guess that humanity’s day would come today.

Mozi exposes it well with the expression ‘Heavens Will’ meaning that Heaven arranged that some achieving happiness while others suffer is not just unfair but impossible, also even if he did not know when our day would come about.

To the Madrid people, asking for their support for the celebration there of a Congress on Human Unity.

– If we make decisions jointly instead of each state separately, we will only benefit us and will not mutually harm ourselves. We summon experts in human common interests to agree on binding proposals for human unity and cooperation
– As consequence of human shared security, military disinvestment releases great resources against underdevelopment and for welfare, but most important is that, once without harming purposes –which obviously have to be hidden, all public activities are transparent and human common sense serves for decision making without political enforcement.
– The proof of it is this message only needing to be shared by you or anybody willing to represent humanity so that we become part of both sides in conflict and so achieve truce all over the world for the Congress celebration.

Power is yours, please, make good use of it on the 8th of March by supporting human unity so that Madrid City Hall cooperates with the organization of a World Congress where to apply and set up an inclusive decision-making system for Humanity as we are proposing from HUM – Human Unity Movement. Because the result of inclusive decision making will be only our benefit instead of mutually harming as we have been doing up to now as the consequence of partial or exclusive decision making.

Women have the last word. And the first too. Please, say it. Human unity is a decision each person immediately makes, here and now, once understood the universal good it entails and that means also to assume responsibility for humanity and its representation too when you choose, decide, buy, talk…Even if unworthy of you, this message is given to you bowing and with both hands by whom admire you and love you.

It is very interesting to see that Confucius and Aristotle use similar ethical concepts. By the dog! We could think they were in contact. The main Nicomachean Ethics principle is the Mean or the Intermediate and one of the Confucianism Four Classics is, besides the Analects, Mencius, the Great Learning, the Doctrine of the Mean expressing the same idea as Aristotle’s does. The Mean is what society values most, as much by praising as by pricing it and does it so by comparing and refusing the extremes.

Likewise, Confucius (Analects) and Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics) distinguish two types of justice. A human justice or fairness, equity, based on putting yourself in other people’s shoes and basis of the Golden and Silver rules: treat others as you would like to be treated and don’t do to others what you would not like other´s do to you. Then we have another type of justice, legal justice, which is distributive and meant to establish hierarchy, ranks. This justice discriminates people hierarchically like husband and wife, elder or younger brother, leader or subjects.

Mozi raised his voice against the Confucian system which supports a few people enjoying everything and having everybody else at their disposal while the majority have it difficult to live and stays at those few people’s mercy and at their service. Mozi also pointed out that the way to solve this discrimination and inequality is universality so that we can use common sense, rational criteria. Mozi explains well that “the cause of the world calamities is partial or exclusive decision making”. Confucius actually would agree with that part, but Mencius, a later Confucius follower would respond Mozi that it could not be “a society without a state”.

Indeed Mozi´s universality could not be put in place because universality or inclusive decision making was impossible in an unknown world, incommunicado and full of unknown people. However, that ideal has become nowadays possible.

It is amazing again that we can see at the beginning of the Nicomachean Ethics when Aristotle criticizes previous ethical proposals, he includes the “universal good” of his master Plato. Aristotle says that the “universal good”, is not real because everything real has one before and one after, something the “universal good” does not have. Indeed, inclusive decision making was an idea, even the Will of Heaven, as Mozi says, but nothing real until our time. Now we can make universal proposals, meant for benefiting humanity, and such a proposal can be bettered by different persons so that we see how the ‘universal good’ can have one before and one after.

In the XVIII and XIX centuries, the world was fully discovered and thus some intended to achieve peace or universalization. So was the case of the abbey of Saint Pierre who proposed a Confederation of European states in order to decide everything by arbitration instead of by waging wars. The benefits for everyone, including the kings and high officials, would have been immense, but nobody paid attention to the abbey even if he was so convinced that he tried as hard as he could. Some years later Rousseau was asked why the abbey did not success and Rousseau answered that hierarchy and war are the same so it was not possible for those officials to consider something which could not make sense for their identity and business.

Rousseau went to say that state officials wage war as much to the enemies as to the subjects. We can link Rousseau’s words to Aristotle’s idea of two forms of justice. Aristotle says that human justice or fairness is based on transparency and freedom so as when you sign a contract, you first read it, understand it and then you sign it if you want to. And it is the same if you sign a loan or a mortgage and so on. For this, you do not need any official because this kind of justice is solved just by any person, as Sancho would do in his government on the Barataria Insula.

At this point, we have to further inquire about this legal or hierarchical justice relation with waging war. Since war is about to harm the enemy, you need to deceive him, or, at least, you cannot let him know your purposes since, otherwise, he would take countermeasures and you would be self-defeating yourself. In the same way, the leader cannot disclose his purposes to his subjects, they have to trust him, give him their freedom and lives, and this is the situation we have to face now. Stopping partial decision making and implementing universal decision making or peace is within our reach since we all are interconnected and know the limits of the world and the people in it, but we still have to solve the obstacle of deception and its consequence; mistrust.

But everything was seen and foreseen. The final chapter of Kant´s Perpetual Peace proposal, the Appendix II, titled “On the harmony between politics and moral according to the transcendental concept of public right”, can be resumed this way: If we take away every content from the law and we keep only its form, this is publicity. Now, if a proposal cannot be published because it will harm someone’s interests and, knowing about it, he will take measures against it we have proof of the proposal unfairness. And Kant adds; it does mean that to be able to publish your purpose means it to be fair because if the one publishing it has overwhelming power, he does not need to care about the opposition it might cause on others he is not afraid of.

But, finally, Kant says that we have the transcendental concept of public right, the one able to harmonize politics and moral and he puts it this way: “if a proposal stand only in need of publicity to achieve its aim, it means that it agrees as much with morality as with politics”, “because it is in agreement with the universal public aim which is happiness and this is the task of politics”.

Indeed, we apply to that principle calling for an open and transparent Congress on human unity as we have already proposed to the Madrid City Hall and we are waiting now for an answer. Our public and universal proposal is as follows: let’s adopt an inclusive decision-making system (human unity) so that in this way we will only think about how to benefit us all instead of basically think about how to harm others as the consequence of partial decision making.

‘Inclusive’ means that all proposals are open and transparent as the one above, this is, that the purpose´s end or aim is exposed so that each person is able to better it or tell if she finds something inadequate in it or simply accepts it as her own purpose, as we expect it to universally happen with the previous proposal basis of all others, as also with the call for the Congress so that we are proposing it one to another and all together.

We have applied again together with the NGO Peace and Cooperation for a meeting with Madrid City Hall in order to retake or propose anew the celebration in Madrid of a Congress on Human Unity in 2021 since 2020 as planned would be to short time now for arranging it.

We convene a Congress in order to adopt a system of inclusive decision making (human unity) because in this way we will only deal about how to benefit ourselves –and so we will avoid the purpose of harming each other as the consequence of partial or exclusive decision making.
To be inclusive means that each proposal, like the one above, is open and transparent, this is; it exposes its purpose so that each person can improve it, point out any inadequacy or agree with it and make it her own.

The Congress shall be financed by the input of the participants or sponsoring companies, however, the Congress return is the peace dividend generated by inclusive decision making. Cooperation agreements with or among companies are voluntary and public so that each person can judge in case of dispute or doubt according to their public agreement, this is the usual guarantee among them and it could not be otherwise in international business.

We all share common sense and each person not only can and shall judge about all what she knows, including her relations with the rest of human beings, but it must have right to it and not only to judge about issues concerning her country, actually about her leaders election, so that they assume the relationship with other countries.

This is the first human right. If we deprive ourselves of that right, we are deprived of every human right and we can only have political rights, depriving us of the possibility of living together. We need indeed that right in order to set up the human community. And we cannot obtain it by claiming for it, claiming it to or from whom? We have just to take it, to assume it and put it in motion calling the Congress.
States make sense only against each other, their advantage can be relative only, but regarding Humanity, states have nothing to say.

The reason why we do not have a right to our own opinion on international relations is because they are mediated by violence and, consequently, their purpose has to be hidden from other people, not only from the enemy but also from nationals, citizens or people or whatever you call those without post in the state, always subjects but never friends, and this is why war and injustice or inequality is the same issue. But, once violence is not the way, politicians can act with humanity also.

Rousseau saw this well when analyzing the Abby Saint Pierre Perpetual Peace proposal to the European states by setting up a Confederation. Rousseau says that states are not suitable for such a project because their only possible interest is relative to the others, it has to be exclusive –Rousseau concludes that since states can´t assume such an initiative, maybe a revolution was the only way…-but for us today common sense is just enough.

And here we are, and from here we can offer a deal to all human beings which can be freely accepted by all and each of us.

As the director of Chinese studies in Instituto Complutense de Estudios Internacionales, ICEI, I have participated in a seminar about “ExpAs the director of Chinese studies in Instituto Complutense de Estudios Internacionales, ICEI, I have participated in a seminar about “Experience of the Chinese investments in Spain”, inserted in the general project: “A new impulse in China Spain relationship in the political frame of the European Union”.
With it in mind I have read or re-read a good part of the most recent information of our most signified experts on China – Spain relations. And it is interesting to notice that most of them point out the special attention that China is addressing to Spain. However, Spain does not pay much attention to it and, worst, is not getting any corresponding investments or economic returns of it, not even similar to others UE partners. The Elcano Instituto expert, Mario Esteban, puts it this way: “friends, but not partners”, where I shall insist that friendship comes just from one side because Spain, probably limited by her alliances and her self-absorption, shows reticence, misgiving and incompetence in regard to this relationship which causes irritation among entrepreneurs.
Diplomats with direct experience in dealings with China attribute such a special attention from China to Spain because Spain never closed her embassy after the violent eviction of the students from Tiananmen Square, was very much in favor of involvement with China to support her reform process instead of her involution and the Spanish Foreign Affair minister, Ordoñez, was the first to visit China after June 1989. Surely because all that, the Instituto Complutense de Asia Office, I was founder and manager of it, was opened in Beijing in 1994.
However, my opinion differs or is not limited to those of the diplomats, it is possible that this deference of China towards Spain is due to their previous relationship which has to be found in China records. In Spain, Asia is not included in the world for the academy.
Even if the Portuguese were first to arrive in China, the first regular and sound relationship with a western power was Spain. Spain set up her empire in the Philippines where, besides her general mission of converting the native there to Catholicism (Universalism), Spaniards there mostly were dedicated to commerce with China. We have the data of the yearly two ways journey of the Manila galleon for several centuries leaving from Acapulco in Mexico with silver from Potosi (Bolivia) crossing the Pacific, the Spanish Lake at that time, to return from Manila fully loaded of Chinese goods. During those centuries many Chinese, called shangleys, were stablished in Manila with their families, most of them suppliers and dealers. They kept a constant and fluid relations with the Spaniards there and this enabled them to appreciate and transmit the ways, vision, proposals and propaganda of the Hispanic civilization and compare it with their own.
In the Spanish and Catholic side, the Jesuits entered into China to know her civilization learning the language and looking for the conversion of the Chinese people. It seems that their main target was the emperor. Particularly interesting in this regards are the records of the Italian Jesuit Mateo Rizzi who stablished himself in Beijing and of special significance the experience of the Spanish Jesuit Diego de Pantoja. This last one was commissioned to represent Philip II in front of the Ming emperor and during two years was busy looking for presents which would show him Spanish ways and intends. His travel was finally cancelled, when a good part of the presents were already in Mexico. And the reason for it was that Philip learnt that making presents to the Chinese emperor meant to be his subject.
Even though we have information of some reckless plans to invade China emulating Cortés in Mexico, those were not carried out, but in any case they were subordinated to the idea of converting China to Catholicism and put it under the unifying authority of the Pope. And Chinese saw that Jesuits would learn other people language, so the tagalo in Philippines as also standard Chinese, in order to preach the gospel in their hosts` languages.
When some centuries later China faced the British Empire and other powers, Western civilization had changed a lot. After the Westphalia peace treaty a new system of sovereign nation states had come to place and nationalism as the totalitarian contemporary ideology more and more sharpened by the French Revolution and by Romanticism. Last, but not less, also supported by the convenience of new peripheral or maritime powers, the new hegemons, UK and later USA, whose strategic interest was to divide as much as possible the continent.
Therefore, the destructive approach of the British Empire, prone to cannon politics and opium business was quite shocking for China where the sovereign nation state concept had not been introduced and her vision was more similar to the Spanish one of integrating the world under a single rule able so to guarantee peace, very much in contradiction with people mistreatment since a new and uprising power was supposed to gain them for her cause.
Chinese documents of the time usually refer to the British as “rebels”, since they assumed their intention was to install themselves in the throne of the Central Empire (Zhong Guo – China) displacing the Manchus, as it had happened before with the Mongols and with themselves, who, as Manchus, were also ‘foreigners’ in China. That very question has recently emerged by the occasion of the Hong Kong handover when the contemporary Chinese authorities called the Qing deals with the British “unequal treaties” since they showed a clearly different concepts or standards in international relations according to the mentioned approach. And probably that candid old concept of China was key preventing China to apply a policy or strategy for dividing foreign powers, as the situation of the XIX century very much invited.
I think that, given our current unidimensional system of nationalism, it is not unappropriated to illustrate it saying that three centuries back it would have been incomprehensible to put a bomb in a market or to bomb a city killing civilians indiscriminately to bend a state. It would have been considered terrorism, not only if coming from illegal groups, since the people was not linked to power -the monopoly of violence-, as now, no matter if democratically elected or not. And, in any case, such an action was incompatible with the traditional Hispanic or Chinese systems whose proposal was about inclusion and, in their own ways, their purpose was to pacify the world. Indeed, both powers shared the same concept of evil as originated by exclusion, or partial decision taking. (It does not mean that I am closing my eyes to fact that Hispanic supremacy on Europe, particularly on the Holy Roman German Empire, was facilitated by sense of threat in Europe caused by the Ottoman Empire, as also the disappearance of this perception contributed very much to its end).
On her side, China had to adapt to modern times; first overthrowing the Qing dynasty with a revolution lead by the Nationalist party and then with a second revolution led by the Communist party against the previous one because it was not Nationalist enough since the Nationalist party was “selling the country”, to foreign powers and operated in connivance with them according with the Communist party.
Nowadays, however, when China has reached a powerful enough position in the world as to reflect on her own experience needed to project herself to the world, it has not been able to refute her own ancestral discourse and acknowledgement that the sovereign national states system is very much in contradiction with her most basic understanding as also, in my opinion, with simple common sense –we will mention it later.
For Chinese civilization the main task of the state is to provide safety, security for the people, and her response is inclusive decision making. So sees it Confucius who claimed for the restoration of a unified command system according with the previous Zhou dynasty as the only way to put an end to ceaseless wars among the many states of his time. “Partiality is the root cause of all calamities of the world”, says also Mozi in order to expose his doctrine of Universal Love, which also begins this way: “The wise person, assuming the task of thinking the government of the world, shall first investigate the cause of disorder, in the same way as a doctor study the cause of the illness of the patient to look for a cure” (Book 4, Universal Love I, 1)
Indeed, the first thing Western people note in Chinese managing ways is their will to reach consensus of all the parts according with a hierarchy. However, Chinese must have doubts about a single rule of the world coming from the Middle Kingdom throne while the world lives day and night at the same time and, perhaps, they can´t avoid to long for a partner like Spain, a Spain that in past times shared their principles in search of a pacifying or unity proposal while the British Empire and other Western powers resulted just destructive forces only good for alliance against a third one.
China under Xi Jinping leadership seems to be rescuing that concept of shared security and common fate of humanity and it departs from economic measures and shared development to look for it. This approach has also been well noticed by the West and it has been as much the principle of the EU as also the globalization engine; growing trading, economic engagement and cooperation prevent confrontation and war. In this regard, the New Silk Road project or BRI – Belt and Road Initiative, pretends to integrate the worlAs the director of Chinese studies in Instituto Complutense de Estudios Internacionales, ICEI, I have participated in a seminar about “Experience of the Chinese investments in Spain”, inserted in the general project: “A new impulse in China Spain relationship in the political frame of the European Union”.
With it in mind I have read or re-read a good part of the most recent information of our most signified experts on China – Spain relations. And it is interesting to notice that most of them point out the special attention that China is addressing to Spain. However, Spain does not pay much attention to it and, worst, is not getting any corresponding investments or economic returns of it, not even similar to others UE partners. The Elcano Instituto expert, Mario Esteban, puts it this way: “friends, but not partners”, where I shall insist that friendship comes just from one side because Spain, probably limited by her alliances and her self-absorption, shows reticence, misgiving and incompetence in regard to this relationship which causes irritation among entrepreneurs.
Diplomats with direct experience in dealings with China attribute such a special attention from China to Spain because Spain never closed her embassy after the violent eviction of the students from Tiananmen Square, was very much in favor of involvement with China to support her reform process instead of her involution and the Spanish Foreign Affair minister, Ordoñez, was the first to visit China after June 1989. Surely because all that, the Instituto Complutense de Asia Office, I was founder and manager of it, was opened in Beijing in 1994.
However, my opinion differs or is not limited to those of the diplomats, it is possible that this deference of China towards Spain is due to their previous relationship which has to be found in China records. In Spain, Asia is not included in the world for the academy.
Even if the Portuguese were first to arrive in China, the first regular and sound relationship with a western power was Spain. Spain set up her empire in the Philippines where, besides her general mission of converting the native there to Catholicism (Universalism), Spaniards there mostly were dedicated to commerce with China. We have the data of the yearly two ways journey of the Manila galleon for several centuries leaving from Acapulco in Mexico with silver from Potosi (Bolivia) crossing the Pacific, the Spanish Lake at that time, to return from Manila fully loaded of Chinese goods. During those centuries many Chinese, called shangleys, were stablished in Manila with their families, most of them suppliers and dealers. They kept a constant and fluid relations with the Spaniards there and this enabled them to appreciate and transmit the ways, vision, proposals and propaganda of the Hispanic civilization and compare it with their own.
In the Spanish and Catholic side, the Jesuits entered into China to know her civilization learning the language and looking for the conversion of the Chinese people. It seems that their main target was the emperor. Particularly interesting in this regards are the records of the Italian Jesuit Mateo Rizzi who stablished himself in Beijing and of special significance the experience of the Spanish Jesuit Diego de Pantoja. This last one was commissioned to represent Philip II in front of the Ming emperor and during two years was busy looking for presents which would show him Spanish ways and intends. His travel was finally cancelled, when a good part of the presents were already in Mexico. And the reason for it was that Philip learnt that making presents to the Chinese emperor meant to be his subject.
Even though we have information of some reckless plans to invade China emulating Cortés in Mexico, those were not carried out, but in any case they were subordinated to the idea of converting China to Catholicism and put it under the unifying authority of the Pope. And Chinese saw that Jesuits would learn other people language, so the tagalo in Philippines as also standard Chinese, in order to preach the gospel in their hosts` languages.
When some centuries later China faced the British Empire and other powers, Western civilization had changed a lot. After the Westphalia peace treaty a new system of sovereign nation states had come to place and nationalism as the totalitarian contemporary ideology more and more sharpened by the French Revolution and by Romanticism. Last, but not less, also supported by the convenience of new peripheral or maritime powers, the new hegemons, UK and later USA, whose strategic interest was to divide as much as possible the continent.
Therefore, the destructive approach of the British Empire, prone to cannon politics and opium business was quite shocking for China where the sovereign nation state concept had not been introduced and her vision was more similar to the Spanish one of integrating the world under a single rule able so to guarantee peace, very much in contradiction with people mistreatment since a new and uprising power was supposed to gain them for her cause.
Chinese documents of the time usually refer to the British as “rebels”, since they assumed their intention was to install themselves in the throne of the Central Empire (Zhong Guo – China) displacing the Manchus, as it had happened before with the Mongols and with themselves, who, as Manchus, were also ‘foreigners’ in China. That very question has recently emerged by the occasion of the Hong Kong handover when the contemporary Chinese authorities called the Qing deals with the British “unequal treaties” since they showed a clearly different concepts or standards in international relations according to the mentioned approach. And probably that candid old concept of China was key preventing China to apply a policy or strategy for dividing foreign powers, as the situation of the XIX century very much invited.
I think that, given our current unidimensional system of nationalism, it is not unappropriated to illustrate it saying that three centuries back it would have been incomprehensible to put a bomb in a market or to bomb a city killing civilians indiscriminately to bend a state. It would have been considered terrorism, not only if coming from illegal groups, since the people was not linked to power -the monopoly of violence-, as now, no matter if democratically elected or not. And, in any case, such an action was incompatible with the traditional Hispanic or Chinese systems whose proposal was about inclusion and, in their own ways, their purpose was to pacify the world. Indeed, both powers shared the same concept of evil as originated by exclusion, or partial decision taking. (It does not mean that I am closing my eyes to fact that Hispanic supremacy on Europe, particularly on the Holy Roman German Empire, was facilitated by sense of threat in Europe caused by the Ottoman Empire, as also the disappearance of this perception contributed very much to its end).
On her side, China had to adapt to modern times; first overthrowing the Qing dynasty with a revolution lead by the Nationalist party and then with a second revolution led by the Communist party against the previous one because it was not Nationalist enough since the Nationalist party was “selling the country”, to foreign powers and operated in connivance with them according with the Communist party.
Nowadays, however, when China has reached a powerful enough position in the world as to reflect on her own experience needed to project herself to the world, it has not been able to refute her own ancestral discourse and acknowledgement that the sovereign national states system is very much in contradiction with her most basic understanding as also, in my opinion, with simple common sense –we will mention it later.
For Chinese civilization the main task of the state is to provide safety, security for the people, and her response is inclusive decision making. So sees it Confucius who claimed for the restoration of a unified command system according with the previous Zhou dynasty as the only way to put an end to ceaseless wars among the many states of his time. “Partiality is the root cause of all calamities of the world”, says also Mozi in order to expose his doctrine of Universal Love, which also begins this way: “The wise person, assuming the task of thinking the government of the world, shall first investigate the cause of disorder, in the same way as a doctor study the cause of the illness of the patient to look for a cure” (Book 4, Universal Love I, 1)
Indeed, the first thing Western people note in Chinese managing ways is their will to reach consensus of all the parts according with a hierarchy. However, Chinese must have doubts about a single rule of the world coming from the Middle Kingdom throne while the world lives day and night at the same time and, perhaps, they can´t avoid to long for a partner like Spain, a Spain that in past times shared their principles in search of a pacifying or unity proposal while the British Empire and other Western powers resulted just destructive forces only good for alliance against a third one.
China under Xi Jinping leadership seems to be rescuing that concept of shared security and common fate of humanity and it departs from economic measures and shared development to look for it. This approach has also been well noticed by the West and it has been as much the principle of the EU as also the globalization engine; growing trading, economic engagement and cooperation prevent confrontation and war. In this regard, the New Silk Road project or BRI – Belt and Road Initiative, pretends to integrate the world central island, Eurasia and Africa and it is a move in that direction with independence of other possible motives that can impulse it. And it is not just this project, but other China policies aim at globalization development or, even more, a step beyond it; integration, in a time when their promoters of yesterday, UK and USA, step back and look to protectionism.
In my opinion, the EU shall reach a comprehensive agreement with China not only on the BRI but also on new standards for a sustainable industry and economy able to mitigate climate change under a regulatory frame valid for the whole world. This time, however, the EU does not need to push to impose her concept of (political) human rights on China as she has been doing up to now. On the contrary, the EU shall make an effort to understand and recognize China´s own human rights concept which refers mainly to safety or security and, in consequence, goes beyond the sovereign nation state and long for humanity. All this, I insist, without the EU renouncing to her own values, where many of her virtues come from, because China shall and actually want to learn some good practices applied by European governments in terms of transparency, responsibility, accountability and clear and precise regulations and rules.
But even this complementarity is not enough; a specific contribution from Spain is needed, a Spain which, as China, shall be able to look back at herself and not just meekly take and assume without further consideration the refusal and contempt on herself, on her past, from the vision of her historical competitors and rivals. And here, she also needed to look for Portugal priceless contribution since both enjoy a special position to rescue a part of the world very unfairly and painfully relegated and forgotten, the South Atlantic area, and to propose those countries at its banks to create a cooperation and joint development area joining that EU and China BRI project of integral development.
Likewise, we need to take into account and acknowledge that main source of security in the world central island is Russia, something quite clear according to my perception, even if the UE might not want to take notice. We can appreciate it, however, just by seeing those involved in conflicts in the area turning their eyes on Russia once US is leaving. At the same time, Russia shall cooperate to attract another great country and culture, India, and so on and on.
At this point we can notice here that regulations and agreements transparency are only possible if their purpose is universal, look for the inclusion of all, even if this incorporation is step by step. I think that China has historically seen with skepticism the concepts of transparency and participation, something easy to understand since decision taking in the past could not have such an universal character and, therefore, even if benevolence was meant to be at the roots of government, her objectives could not be but strategic and, therefore, they had to be hidden.
Nowadays, however, the seal of universality is transparency and vice versa. Most important is that the vision is inclusive, so that everyone has a place in it where they can see themselves there and recognized themselves in it or, if not, they will have the chance to dispute it and correct it.
In this way, as we see it now, the last countries to incorporate into a world sharing a common development system and a shared security system could be UK and USA, the North Atlantic area. Since they are the last world leaders, it is to understand that any status quo revision might always be seen detrimental to their interests. It is not the case, universality and inclusion is a disruptive step which brings us to a new stage leaving history as we know it behind. A new scenario beneficial for all without exception, finally outside the zero sum game of history. However, from the beginning we have to recognize their worries and interests and keep open the door for their participation until the human project is accomplished. If the project is not inclusive and universal, transparency will be impossible. Unilateral as also bilateral and even multilateral decision taking will not achieve it since it will turn out to be about a dealing with the reaction it prompts in those excluded, well against its purpose
And this is not all; transparency or universality implies also that those agreements, regulations have to be argued, beyond the planet protection and sustainability, based on human rights and so on the vital rights or those people in marginal areas, as South Atlantic and others, and the protection of those rights and the integration of those areas shall be assumed as a priority and important part in the economic and political projections and activities, so that any development contributes to welfare and integration of those who need it more, because if it is not so it results all the same a remorseless and ill-intentioned deed as in the past since the needs of those people are at sight and to look somewhere else and claim for human rights at the same time is contradictory.
Yes, my friends, humanity, human principle is based on putting ourselves in other people shoes -and surely Africans can be well our teachers since they are people who did not submit to the brutalizing and alienating action of the state. We can´t pretend to be inclusive or talk about human rights and at the same time think in terms of states as the absolute reference. To be inclusive is to be inclusive with the people and maybe this is the most difficult part to understand and to execute. How can we pretend to be inclusive if at the same time we let others starve or endure terrible hardships? The ability we have to understand each other is based in our ability to put ourselves in other people place, this is our common sense and the base of everything else. This is what humans have and if we renounce to it in order to base our relationship on the armed units or states, we will be discriminating and, therefore, we will need to keep applying as up to now to irrationality, harmful for all, the state of violence we live in now and we will not ever go anywhere from it.
But politicians are also people, persons, and if their main mission has always been to put themselves by the side, it is time for them to give face.
d central island, Eurasia and Africa and it is a move in that direction with independence of other possible motives that can impulse it. And it is not just this project, but other China policies aim at globalization development or, even more, a step beyond it; integration, in a time when their promoters of yesterday, UK and USA, step back and look to protectionism.
In my opinion, the EU shall reach a comprehensive agreement with China not only on the BRI but also on new standards for a sustainable industry and economy able to mitigate climate change under a regulatory frame valid for the whole world. This time, however, the EU does not need to push to impose her concept of (political) human rights on China as she has been doing up to now. On the contrary, the EU shall make an effort to understand and recognize China´s own human rights concept which refers mainly to safety or security and, in consequence, goes beyond the sovereign nation state and long for humanity. All this, I insist, without the EU renouncing to her own values, where many of her virtues come from, because China shall and actually want to learn some good practices applied by European governments in terms of transparency, responsibility, accountability and clear and precise regulations and rules.
But even this complementarity is not enough; a specific contribution from Spain is needed, a Spain which, as China, shall be able to look back at herself and not just meekly take and assume without further consideration the refusal and contempt on herself, on her past, from the vision of her historical competitors and rivals. And here, she also needed to look for Portugal priceless contribution since both enjoy a special position to rescue a part of the world very unfairly and painfully relegated and forgotten, the South Atlantic area, and to propose those countries at its banks to create a cooperation and joint development area joining that EU and China BRI project of integral development.
Likewise, we need to take into account and acknowledge that main source of security in the world central island is Russia, something quite clear according to my perception, even if the UE might not want to take notice. We can appreciate it, however, just by seeing those involved in conflicts in the area turning their eyes on Russia once US is leaving. At the same time, Russia shall cooperate to attract another great country and culture, India, and so on and on.
At this point we can notice here that regulations and agreements transparency are only possible if their purpose is universal, look for the inclusion of all, even if this incorporation is step by step. I think that China has historically seen with skepticism the concepts of transparency and participation, something easy to understand since decision taking in the past could not have such an universal character and, therefore, even if benevolence was meant to be at the roots of government, her objectives could not be but strategic and, therefore, they had to be hidden.
Nowadays, however, the seal of universality is transparency and vice versa. Most important is that the vision is inclusive, so that everyone has a place in it where they can see themselves there and recognized themselves in it or, if not, they will have the chance to dispute it and correct it.
In this way, as we see it now, the last countries to incorporate into a world sharing a common development system and a shared security system could be UK and USA, the North Atlantic area. Since they are the last world leaders, it is to understand that any status quo revision might always be seen detrimental to their interests. It is not the case, universality and inclusion is a disruptive step which brings us to a new stage leaving history as we know it behind. A new scenario beneficial for all without exception, finally outside the zero sum game of history. However, from the beginning we have to recognize their worries and interests and keep open the door for their participation until the human project is accomplished. If the project is not inclusive and universal, transparency will be impossible. Unilateral as also bilateral and even multilateral decision taking will not achieve it since it will turn out to be about a dealing with the reaction it prompts in those excluded, well against its purpose
And this is not all; transparency or universality implies also that those agreements, regulations have to be argued, beyond the planet protection and sustainability, based on human rights and so on the vital rights or those people in marginal areas, as South Atlantic and others, and the protection of those rights and the integration of those areas shall be assumed as a priority and important part in the economic and political projections and activities, so that any development contributes to welfare and integration of those who need it more, because if it is not so it results all the same a remorseless and ill-intentioned deed as in the past since the needs of those people are at sight and to look somewhere else and claim for human rights at the same time is contradictory.
Yes, my friends, humanity, human principle is based on putting ourselves in other people shoes -and surely Africans can be well our teachers since they are people who did not submit to the brutalizing and alienating action of the state. We can´t pretend to be inclusive or talk about human rights and at the same time think in terms of states as the absolute reference. To be inclusive is to be inclusive with the people and maybe this is the most difficult part to understand and to execute. How can we pretend to be inclusive if at the same time we let others starve or endure terrible hardships? The ability we have to understand each other is based in our ability to put ourselves in other people place, this is our common sense and the base of everything else. This is what humans have and if we renounce to it in order to base our relationship on the armed units or states, we will be discriminating and, therefore, we will need to keep applying as up to now to irrationality, harmful for all, the state of violence we live in now and we will not ever go anywhere from it.
But politicians are also people, persons, and if their main mission has always been to put themselves by the side, it is time for them to give face.
erience of the Chinese investments in Spain”, inserted in the general project: “A new impulse in China Spain relationship in the political frame of the European Union”.
With it As the director of Chinese studies in Instituto Complutense de Estudios Internacionales, ICEI, I have participated in a seminar about “Experience of the Chinese investments in Spain”, inserted in the general project: “A new impulse in China Spain relationship in the political frame of the European Union”.
With it in mind I have read or re-read a good part of the most recent information of our most signified experts on China – Spain relations. And it is interesting to notice that most of them point out the special attention that China is addressing to Spain. However, Spain does not pay much attention to it and, worst, is not getting any corresponding investments or economic returns of it, not even similar to others UE partners. The Elcano Instituto expert, Mario Esteban, puts it this way: “friends, but not partners”, where I shall insist that friendship comes just from one side because Spain, probably limited by her alliances and her self-absorption, shows reticence, misgiving and incompetence in regard to this relationship which causes irritation among entrepreneurs.
Diplomats with direct experience in dealings with China attribute such a special attention from China to Spain because Spain never closed her embassy after the violent eviction of the students from Tiananmen Square, was very much in favor of involvement with China to support her reform process instead of her involution and the Spanish Foreign Affair minister, Ordoñez, was the first to visit China after June 1989. Surely because all that, the Instituto Complutense de Asia Office, I was founder and manager of it, was opened in Beijing in 1994.
However, my opinion differs or is not limited to those of the diplomats, it is possible that this deference of China towards Spain is due to their previous relationship which has to be found in China records. In Spain, Asia is not included in the world for the academy.
Even if the Portuguese were first to arrive in China, the first regular and sound relationship with a western power was Spain. Spain set up her empire in the Philippines where, besides her general mission of converting the native there to Catholicism (Universalism), Spaniards there mostly were dedicated to commerce with China. We have the data of the yearly two ways journey of the Manila galleon for several centuries leaving from Acapulco in Mexico with silver from Potosi (Bolivia) crossing the Pacific, the Spanish Lake at that time, to return from Manila fully loaded of Chinese goods. During those centuries many Chinese, called shangleys, were stablished in Manila with their families, most of them suppliers and dealers. They kept a constant and fluid relations with the Spaniards there and this enabled them to appreciate and transmit the ways, vision, proposals and propaganda of the Hispanic civilization and compare it with their own.
In the Spanish and Catholic side, the Jesuits entered into China to know her civilization learning the language and looking for the conversion of the Chinese people. It seems that their main target was the emperor. Particularly interesting in this regards are the records of the Italian Jesuit Mateo Rizzi who stablished himself in Beijing and of special significance the experience of the Spanish Jesuit Diego de Pantoja. This last one was commissioned to represent Philip II in front of the Ming emperor and during two years was busy looking for presents which would show him Spanish ways and intends. His travel was finally cancelled, when a good part of the presents were already in Mexico. And the reason for it was that Philip learnt that making presents to the Chinese emperor meant to be his subject.
Even though we have information of some reckless plans to invade China emulating Cortés in Mexico, those were not carried out, but in any case they were subordinated to the idea of converting China to Catholicism and put it under the unifying authority of the Pope. And Chinese saw that Jesuits would learn other people language, so the tagalo in Philippines as also standard Chinese, in order to preach the gospel in their hosts` languages.
When some centuries later China faced the British Empire and other powers, Western civilization had changed a lot. After the Westphalia peace treaty a new system of sovereign nation states had come to place and nationalism as the totalitarian contemporary ideology more and more sharpened by the French Revolution and by Romanticism. Last, but not less, also supported by the convenience of new peripheral or maritime powers, the new hegemons, UK and later USA, whose strategic interest was to divide as much as possible the continent.
Therefore, the destructive approach of the British Empire, prone to cannon politics and opium business was quite shocking for China where the sovereign nation state concept had not been introduced and her vision was more similar to the Spanish one of integrating the world under a single rule able so to guarantee peace, very much in contradiction with people mistreatment since a new and uprising power was supposed to gain them for her cause.
Chinese documents of the time usually refer to the British as “rebels”, since they assumed their intention was to install themselves in the throne of the Central Empire (Zhong Guo – China) displacing the Manchus, as it had happened before with the Mongols and with themselves, who, as Manchus, were also ‘foreigners’ in China. That very question has recently emerged by the occasion of the Hong Kong handover when the contemporary Chinese authorities called the Qing deals with the British “unequal treaties” since they showed a clearly different concepts or standards in international relations according to the mentioned approach. And probably that candid old concept of China was key preventing China to apply a policy or strategy for dividing foreign powers, as the situation of the XIX century very much invited.
I think that, given our current unidimensional system of nationalism, it is not unappropriated to illustrate it saying that three centuries back it would have been incomprehensible to put a bomb in a market or to bomb a city killing civilians indiscriminately to bend a state. It would have been considered terrorism, not only if coming from illegal groups, since the people was not linked to power -the monopoly of violence-, as now, no matter if democratically elected or not. And, in any case, such an action was incompatible with the traditional Hispanic or Chinese systems whose proposal was about inclusion and, in their own ways, their purpose was to pacify the world. Indeed, both powers shared the same concept of evil as originated by exclusion, or partial decision taking. (It does not mean that I am closing my eyes to fact that Hispanic supremacy on Europe, particularly on the Holy Roman German Empire, was facilitated by sense of threat in Europe caused by the Ottoman Empire, as also the disappearance of this perception contributed very much to its end).
On her side, China had to adapt to modern times; first overthrowing the Qing dynasty with a revolution lead by the Nationalist party and then with a second revolution led by the Communist party against the previous one because it was not Nationalist enough since the Nationalist party was “selling the country”, to foreign powers and operated in connivance with them according with the Communist party.
Nowadays, however, when China has reached a powerful enough position in the world as to reflect on her own experience needed to project herself to the world, it has not been able to refute her own ancestral discourse and acknowledgement that the sovereign national states system is very much in contradiction with her most basic understanding as also, in my opinion, with simple common sense –we will mention it later.
For Chinese civilization the main task of the state is to provide safety, security for the people, and her response is inclusive decision making. So sees it Confucius who claimed for the restoration of a unified command system according with the previous Zhou dynasty as the only way to put an end to ceaseless wars among the many states of his time. “Partiality is the root cause of all calamities of the world”, says also Mozi in order to expose his doctrine of Universal Love, which also begins this way: “The wise person, assuming the task of thinking the government of the world, shall first investigate the cause of disorder, in the same way as a doctor study the cause of the illness of the patient to look for a cure” (Book 4, Universal Love I, 1)
Indeed, the first thing Western people note in Chinese managing ways is their will to reach consensus of all the parts according with a hierarchy. However, Chinese must have doubts about a single rule of the world coming from the Middle Kingdom throne while the world lives day and night at the same time and, perhaps, they can´t avoid to long for a partner like Spain, a Spain that in past times shared their principles in search of a pacifying or unity proposal while the British Empire and other Western powers resulted just destructive forces only good for alliance against a third one.
China under Xi Jinping leadership seems to be rescuing that concept of shared security and common fate of humanity and it departs from economic measures and shared development to look for it. This approach has also been well noticed by the West and it has been as much the principle of the EU as also the globalization engine; growing trading, economic engagement and cooperation prevent confrontation and war. In this regard, the New Silk Road project or BRI – Belt and Road Initiative, pretends to integrate the world central island, Eurasia and Africa and it is a move in that direction with independence of other possible motives that can impulse it. And it is not just this project, but other China policies aim at globalization development or, even more, a step beyond it; integration, in a time when their promoters of yesterday, UK and USA, step back and look to protectionism.
In my opinion, the EU shall reach a comprehensive agreement with China not only on the BRI but also on new standards for a sustainable industry and economy able to mitigate climate change under a regulatory frame valid for the whole world. This time, however, the EU does not need to push to impose her concept of (political) human rights on China as she has been doing up to now. On the contrary, the EU shall make an effort to understand and recognize China´s own human rights concept which refers mainly to safety or security and, in consequence, goes beyond the sovereign nation state and long for humanity. All this, I insist, without the EU renouncing to her own values, where many of her virtues come from, because China shall and actually want to learn some good practices applied by European governments in terms of transparency, responsibility, accountability and clear and precise regulations and rules.
But even this complementarity is not enough; a specific contribution from Spain is needed, a Spain which, as China, shall be able to look back at herself and not just meekly take and assume without further consideration the refusal and contempt on herself, on her past, from the vision of her historical competitors and rivals. And here, she also needed to look for Portugal priceless contribution since both enjoy a special position to rescue a part of the world very unfairly and painfully relegated and forgotten, the South Atlantic area, and to propose those countries at its banks to create a cooperation and joint development area joining that EU and China BRI project of integral development.
Likewise, we need to take into account and acknowledge that main source of security in the world central island is Russia, something quite clear according to my perception, even if the UE might not want to take notice. We can appreciate it, however, just by seeing those involved in conflicts in the area turning their eyes on Russia once US is leaving. At the same time, Russia shall cooperate to attract another great country and culture, India, and so on and on.
At this point we can notice here that regulations and agreements transparency are only possible if their purpose is universal, look for the inclusion of all, even if this incorporation is step by step. I think that China has historically seen with skepticism the concepts of transparency and participation, something easy to understand since decision taking in the past could not have such an universal character and, therefore, even if benevolence was meant to be at the roots of government, her objectives could not be but strategic and, therefore, they had to be hidden.
Nowadays, however, the seal of universality is transparency and vice versa. Most important is that the vision is inclusive, so that everyone has a place in it where they can see themselves there and recognized themselves in it or, if not, they will have the chance to dispute it and correct it.
In this way, as we see it now, the last countries to incorporate into a world sharing a common development system and a shared security system could be UK and USA, the North Atlantic area. Since they are the last world leaders, it is to understand that any status quo revision might always be seen detrimental to their interests. It is not the case, universality and inclusion is a disruptive step which brings us to a new stage leaving history as we know it behind. A new scenario beneficial for all without exception, finally outside the zero sum game of history. However, from the beginning we have to recognize their worries and interests and keep open the door for their participation until the human project is accomplished. If the project is not inclusive and universal, transparency will be impossible. Unilateral as also bilateral and even multilateral decision taking will not achieve it since it will turn out to be about a dealing with the reaction it prompts in those excluded, well against its purpose
And this is not all; transparency or universality implies also that those agreements, regulations have to be argued, beyond the planet protection and sustainability, based on human rights and so on the vital rights or those people in marginal areas, as South Atlantic and others, and the protection of those rights and the integration of those areas shall be assumed as a priority and important part in the economic and political projections and activities, so that any development contributes to welfare and integration of those who need it more, because if it is not so it results all the same a remorseless and ill-intentioned deed as in the past since the needs of those people are at sight and to look somewhere else and claim for human rights at the same time is contradictory.
Yes, my friends, humanity, human principle is based on putting ourselves in other people shoes -and surely Africans can be well our teachers since they are people who did not submit to the brutalizing and alienating action of the state. We can´t pretend to be inclusive or talk about human rights and at the same time think in terms of states as the absolute reference. To be inclusive is to be inclusive with the people and maybe this is the most difficult part to understand and to execute. How can we pretend to be inclusive if at the same time we let others starve or endure terrible hardships? The ability we have to understand each other is based in our ability to put ourselves in other people place, this is our common sense and the base of everything else. This is what humans have and if we renounce to it in order to base our relationship on the armed units or states, we will be discriminating and, therefore, we will need to keep applying as up to now to irrationality, harmful for all, the state of violence we live in now and we will not ever go anywhere from it.
But politicians are also people, persons, and if their main mission has always been to put themselves by the side, it is time for them to give face.
in mind I have read or re-read a good part of the most recent information of our most signified experts on China – Spain relations. And it is interesting to notice that most of them point out the special attention that China is addressing to Spain. However, Spain does not pay much attention to it and, worst, is not getting any corresponding investments or economic returns of it, not even similar to others UE partners. The Elcano Instituto expert, Mario Esteban, puts it this way: “friends, but not partners”, where I shall insist that friendship comes just from one side because Spain, probably limited by her alliances and her self-absorption, shows reticence, misgiving and incompetence in regard to this relationship which causes irritation among entrepreneurs.
Diplomats with direct experience in dealings with China attribute such a special attention from China to Spain because Spain never closed her embassy after the violent eviction of the students from Tiananmen Square, was very much in favor of involvement with China to support her reform process instead of her involution and the Spanish Foreign Affair minister, Ordoñez, was the first to visit China after June 1989. Surely because all that, the Instituto Complutense de Asia Office, I was founder and manager of it, was opened in Beijing in 1994.
However, my opinion differs or is not limited to those of the diplomats, it is possible that this deference of China towards Spain is due to their previous relationship which has to be found in China records. In Spain, Asia is not included in the world for the academy.
Even if the Portuguese were first to arrive in China, the first regular and sound relationship with a western power was Spain. Spain set up her empire in the Philippines where, besides her general mission of converting the native there to Catholicism (Universalism), Spaniards there mostly were dedicated to commerce with China. We have the data of the yearly two ways journey of the Manila galleon for several centuries leaving from Acapulco in Mexico with silver from Potosi (Bolivia) crossing the Pacific, the Spanish Lake at that time, to return from Manila fully loaded of Chinese goods. During those centuries many Chinese, called shangleys, were stablished in Manila with their families, most of them suppliers and dealers. They kept a constant and fluid relations with the Spaniards there and this enabled them to appreciate and transmit the ways, vision, proposals and propaganda of the Hispanic civilization and compare it with their own.
In the Spanish and Catholic side, the Jesuits entered into China to know her civilization learning the language and looking for the conversion of the Chinese people. It seems that their main target was the emperor. Particularly interesting in this regards are the records of the Italian Jesuit Mateo Rizzi who stablished himself in Beijing and of special significance the experience of the Spanish Jesuit Diego de Pantoja. This last one was commissioned to represent Philip II in front of the Ming emperor and during two years was busy looking for presents which would show him Spanish ways and intends. His travel was finally cancelled, when a good part of the presents were already in Mexico. And the reason for it was that Philip learnt that making presents to the Chinese emperor meant to be his subject.
Even though we have information of some reckless plans to invade China emulating Cortés in Mexico, those were not carried out, but in any case they were subordinated to the idea of converting China to Catholicism and put it under the unifying authority of the Pope. And Chinese saw that Jesuits would learn other people language, so the tagalo in Philippines as also standard Chinese, in order to preach the gospel in their hosts` languages.
When some centuries later China faced the British Empire and other powers, Western civilization had changed a lot. After the Westphalia peace treaty a new system of sovereign nation states had come to place and nationalism as the totalitarian contemporary ideology more and more sharpened by the French Revolution and by Romanticism. Last, but not less, also supported by the convenience of new peripheral or maritime powers, the new hegemons, UK and later USA, whose strategic interest was to divide as much as possible the continent.
Therefore, the destructive approach of the British Empire, prone to cannon politics and opium business was quite shocking for China where the sovereign nation state concept had not been introduced and her vision was more similar to the Spanish one of integrating the world under a single rule able so to guarantee peace, very much in contradiction with people mistreatment since a new and uprising power was supposed to gain them for her cause.
Chinese documents of the time usually refer to the British as “rebels”, since they assumed their intention was to install themselves in the throne of the Central Empire (Zhong Guo – China) displacing the Manchus, as it had happened before with the Mongols and with themselves, who, as Manchus, were also ‘foreigners’ in China. That very question has recently emerged by the occasion of the Hong Kong handover when the contemporary Chinese authorities called the Qing deals with the British “unequal treaties” since they showed a clearly different concepts or standards in international relations according to the mentioned approach. And probably that candid old concept of China was key preventing China to apply a policy or strategy for dividing foreign powers, as the situation of the XIX century very much invited.
I think that, given our current unidimensional system of nationalism, it is not unappropriated to illustrate it saying that three centuries back it would have been incomprehensible to put a bomb in a market or to bomb a city killing civilians indiscriminately to bend a state. It would have been considered terrorism, not only if coming from illegal groups, since the people was not linked to power -the monopoly of violence-, as now, no matter if democratically elected or not. And, in any case, such an action was incompatible with the traditional Hispanic or Chinese systems whose proposal was about inclusion and, in their own ways, their purpose was to pacify the world. Indeed, both powers shared the same concept of evil as originated by exclusion, or partial decision taking. (It does not mean that I am closing my eyes to fact that Hispanic supremacy on Europe, particularly on the Holy Roman German Empire, was facilitated by sense of threat in Europe caused by the Ottoman Empire, as also the disappearance of this perception contributed very much to its end).
On her side, China had to adapt to modern times; first overthrowing the Qing dynasty with a revolution lead by the Nationalist party and then with a second revolution led by the Communist party against the previous one because it was not Nationalist enough since the Nationalist party was “selling the country”, to foreign powers and operated in connivance with them according with the Communist party.
Nowadays, however, when China has reached a powerful enough position in the world as to reflect on her own experience needed to project herself to the world, it has not been able to refute her own ancestral discourse and acknowledgement that the sovereign national states system is very much in contradiction with her most basic understanding as also, in my opinion, with simple common sense –we will mention it later.
For Chinese civilization the main task of the state is to provide safety, security for the people, and her response is inclusive decision making. So sees it Confucius who claimed for the restoration of a unified command system according with the previous Zhou dynasty as the only way to put an end to ceaseless wars among the many states of his time. “Partiality is the root cause of all calamities of the world”, says also Mozi in order to expose his doctrine of Universal Love, which also begins this way: “The wise person, assuming the task of thinking the government of the world, shall first investigate the cause of disorder, in the same way as a doctor study the cause of the illness of the patient to look for a cure” (Book 4, Universal Love I, 1)
Indeed, the first thing Western people note in Chinese managing ways is their will to reach consensus of all the parts according with a hierarchy. However, Chinese must have doubts about a single rule of the world coming from the Middle Kingdom throne while the world lives day and night at the same time and, perhaps, they can´t avoid to long for a partner like Spain, a Spain that in past times shared their principles in search of a pacifying or unity proposal while the British Empire and other Western powers resulted just destructive forces only good for alliance against a third one.
China under Xi Jinping leadership seems to be rescuing that concept of shared security and common fate of humanity and it departs from economic measures and shared development to look for it. This approach has also been well noticed by the West and it has been as much the principle of the EU as also the globalization engine; growing trading, economic engagement and cooperation prevent confrontation and war. In this regard, the New Silk Road project or BRI – Belt and Road Initiative, pretends to integrate the world central island, Eurasia and Africa and it is a move in that direction with independence of other possible motives that can impulse it. And it is not just this project, but other China policies aim at globalization development or, even more, a step beyond it; integration, in a time when their promoters of yesterday, UK and USA, step back and look to protectionism.
In my opinion, the EU shall reach a comprehensive agreement with China not only on the BRI but also on new standards for a sustainable industry and economy able to mitigate climate change under a regulatory frame valid for the whole world. This time, however, the EU does not need to push to impose her concept of (political) human rights on China as she has been doing up to now. On the contrary, the EU shall make an effort to understand and recognize China´s own human rights concept which refers mainly to safety or security and, in consequence, goes beyond the sovereign nation state and long for humanity. All this, I insist, without the EU renouncing to her own values, where many of her virtues come from, because China shall and actually want to learn some good practices applied by European governments in terms of transparency, responsibility, accountability and clear and precise regulations and rules.
But even this complementarity is not enough; a specific contribution from Spain is needed, a Spain which, as China, shall be able to look back at herself and not just meekly take and assume without further consideration the refusal and contempt on herself, on her past, from the vision of her historical competitors and rivals. And here, she also needed to look for Portugal priceless contribution since both enjoy a special position to rescue a part of the world very unfairly and painfully relegated and forgotten, the South Atlantic area, and to propose those countries at its banks to create a cooperation and joint development area joining that EU and China BRI project of integral development.
Likewise, we need to take into account and acknowledge that main source of security in the world central island is Russia, something quite clear according to my perception, even if the UE might not want to take notice. We can appreciate it, however, just by seeing those involved in conflicts in the area turning their eyes on Russia once US is leaving. At the same time, Russia shall cooperate to attract another great country and culture, India, and so on and on.
At this point we can notice here that regulations and agreements transparency are only possible if their purpose is universal, look for the inclusion of all, even if this incorporation is step by step. I think that China has historically seen with skepticism the concepts of transparency and participation, something easy to understand since decision taking in the past could not have such an universal character and, therefore, even if benevolence was meant to be at the roots of government, her objectives could not be but strategic and, therefore, they had to be hidden.
Nowadays, however, the seal of universality is transparency and vice versa. Most important is that the vision is inclusive, so that everyone has a place in it where they can see themselves there and recognized themselves in it or, if not, they will have the chance to dispute it and correct it.
In this way, as we see it now, the last countries to incorporate into a world sharing a common development system and a shared security system could be UK and USA, the North Atlantic area. Since they are the last world leaders, it is to understand that any status quo revision might always be seen detrimental to their interests. It is not the case, universality and inclusion is a disruptive step which brings us to a new stage leaving history as we know it behind. A new scenario beneficial for all without exception, finally outside the zero sum game of history. However, from the beginning we have to recognize their worries and interests and keep open the door for their participation until the human project is accomplished. If the project is not inclusive and universal, transparency will be impossible. Unilateral as also bilateral and even multilateral decision taking will not achieve it since it will turn out to be about a dealing with the reaction it prompts in those excluded, well against its purpose
And this is not all; transparency or universality implies also that those agreements, regulations have to be argued, beyond the planet protection and sustainability, based on human rights and so on the vital rights or those people in marginal areas, as South Atlantic and others, and the protection of those rights and the integration of those areas shall be assumed as a priority and important part in the economic and political projections and activities, so that any development contributes to welfare and integration of those who need it more, because if it is not so it results all the same a remorseless and ill-intentioned deed as in the past since the needs of those people are at sight and to look somewhere else and claim for human rights at the same time is contradictory.
Yes, my friends, humanity, human principle is based on putting ourselves in other people shoes -and surely Africans can be well our teachers since they are people who did not submit to the brutalizing and alienating action of the state. We can´t pretend to be inclusive or talk about human rights and at the same time think in terms of states as the absolute reference. To be inclusive is to be inclusive with the people and maybe this is the most difficult part to understand and to execute. How can we pretend to be inclusive if at the same time we let others starve or endure terrible hardships? The ability we have to understand each other is based in our ability to put ourselves in other people place, this is our common sense and the base of everything else. This is what humans have and if we renounce to it in order to base our relationship on the armed units or states, we will be discriminating and, therefore, we will need to keep applying as up to now to irrationality, harmful for all, the state of violence we live in now and we will not ever go anywhere from it.
But politicians are also people, persons, and if their main mission has always been to put themselves by the side, it is time for them to give face.